Best Urban setting Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of urban setting cinema — measured across 848 indexed frames from 11 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Urban setting films over-index on skyscraper, trench coat and fedora — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Dick Tracy (1990)
Warren BeattyDP Vittorio StoraroIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →
All Tess Trueheart wants is to settle down to a quiet life with her boyfriend, detective Dick Tracy. But there's something pretty rotten going on in town, with someone pretty rotten behind it, and Tracy has his hands full with the likes of villain Big Boy Caprice and with the almost irresistible Breathless Mahoney.
- 2
The Crow (1994)
Alex ProyasDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
A poetic guitarist Eric Draven is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered. The crow guides him through the land of the living, and leads him to his killers: knife thrower Tin-tin, drugetic Funboy, car buff T-Bird, and the unsophisticated Skank. One by one, Eric gives these thugs a taste of their own medicine. However their leader Top-Dollar, a world-class crime lord who will dispatch his enemies with a Japanese sword and joke about it later, will soon learn the legend of the crow and the secret to the vigilante's invincibility.
- 3
Ghostbusters (1984)
Ivan ReitmanDP László KovácsIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler work at Columbia University. where they delve into the paranormal and fiddle with many unethical experiments on their students. As they are kicked out of the University, they really understand the paranormal and go into business for themselves. Under the new snazzy business name of 'Ghostbusters', and living in the old firehouse building they work out of, they are called to rid New York City of paranormal phenomenon at everyone's whim. - for a price. They make national press as the media reports the Ghostbusters are the cause of it all. Thrown in jail by the EPA, the mayor takes a chance and calls on them to help save the city. Unbeknownst to all, a long dead Gozer worshiper (Evo Shandor) erected a downtown apartment building which is the cause of all the paranormal activity. They find out the building could resurrect the ancient Hittite god, Gozer, and bring an end to all of humanity. Who are you gonna call to stop this terrible world-ending menace?
- 4
The Terminator (1984)
James CameronDP Adam GreenbergIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Sent back from a dystopian 2029--where the cold machines have conquered the entire world--to 1984 Los Angeles, the indestructible cyborg-assassin known as the "Terminator" commences his deadly mission to kill humankind's most important woman: the unsuspecting Sarah Connor. However, from the same war-torn post-apocalyptic future comes a battle-scarred defender--Kyle Reese, a brave soldier of the human Resistance Army--bent on stopping the cybernetic killer from eliminating the world's last hope. But, the Terminator has no feelings, he doesn't sleep, and above all, he won't stop until he carries out his grim task. Does our future lie in our past?
- 5
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
James CameronDP Adam GreenbergIMDb 8.6TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Over ten years have passed since the first machine called The Terminator tried to kill Sarah Connor and her unborn son, John. The man who will become the future leader of the human resistance against the Machines is now a healthy young boy. However, another Terminator, called the T-1000, is sent back through time by the self-aware computer system, Skynet. This new Terminator is more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor and its mission is to kill John Connor when he's still a child. However, Sarah and John do not have to face the threat of the T-1000 alone. Another Terminator (identical to the same model that tried and failed to kill Sarah Connor in 1984) is also sent back through time to protect them. While John teaches the Terminator about humanity, Sarah tries to prevent the creation of Skynet and the Machines.
- 6
Catwoman (2004)
PitofDP Thierry ArbogastIMDb 3.4TMDB 4.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Catwoman is the story of shy, sensitive artist Patience Philips, a woman who can't seem to stop apologizing for her own existence. She works as a graphic designer for Hedare Beauty, a mammoth cosmetics company on the verge of releasing a revolutionary anti-aging product. When Patience inadvertently happens upon a dark secret her employer is hiding, she finds herself in the middle of a corporate conspiracy. What happens next changes Patience forever. In a mystical twist of fate, she is transformed into a woman with the strength, speed, agility and ultra-keen senses of a cat. With her newfound prowess and feline intuition, Patience becomes Catwoman, a sleek and stealthy creature balancing on the thin line between good and bad. Like any wildcat, she's dangerous, elusive and untamed. Her adventures are complicated by a burgeoning relationship with Tom Lone, a cop who has fallen for Patience but cannot shake his fascination with the mysterious Catwoman, who appears to be responsible for a string of crime sprees plaguing the city.
- 7
The Mask (1994)
Chuck RussellDP John R. LeonettiIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Timid bank clerk, Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey). Unfortunately, he's too gentle, and is unable to handle confrontations. After one of the worst days, he finds a mask which depicts Loki, the Norse god of mischief. When he puts it on, he becomes his inner, self: a cartoon wild man. After Ipkiss's alter ego indirectly kills the friend of small time crime boss, Dorian Tyrel (Peter Greene),he wants the green-faced goon destroyed.
- 8
Invasion (2020)
Fyodor BondarchukDP Vladislav OpelyantsIMDb 5.6TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Alexander Petrovas Artyom / Thomas
Irina Starshenbaumas Yulya Lebedeva
Oleg Menshikovas General Lebedev
Two years after the fall of the alien ship, the life of a young woman from Moscow has been changed forever. Her growing powers are now at the focus of both human and celestial investigation: an alien force takes an interest in her, and will stop short of nothing, including an invasion. Can love and compassion save humanity, when faced with a much greater and more demanding test this time?
What urban setting films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a urban setting frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — skyscraper is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- skyscraper8.5×
- trench coat3.4×
- fedora3.3×
- leather jacket3.2×
- smoke2.9×
- neon sign2.7×
- brick wall1.9×
- shadow1.6×
How urban setting films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate urban setting from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 24%naturalvs 44% baseline
- 23%dayvs 43% baseline
- 67%nightvs 42% baseline
- 62%low keyvs 39% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Frances Ha (2012) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 848 frames from 11 films carrying the urban setting label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/urban-setting
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